Skeleton Solider
'''Skeleton Soldiers '''appear somewhat late in the game, during Chapter 3. They're incredibly weak. However, they have an advantage: they attack in huge swarms. If a Maso Commando is nearby, he may set them aflame, making them twice as fast and twice as strong. They look like World War I soldiers wearing gas masks, and wield bayonet rifles. There are two types, each with their own characteristic look: #The melee version simply rushes at you and tries to stab you with the bayonets. They're incredibly common and the best way to deal with them is to send a rocket or a grenade to the center of a swarm, killing many of them with one shot. They wear flat dull olive uniforms with bloody gas masks that have blue tinted glass. They also have a hole in their chest and the mask's air tube goes through it. #The second version tends to appear after a swarm of the first version. They're a bit taller than the melee version, and actually shoot at you with the rifles. They also have the ability of throwing smoke grenades that can poisons you for a while, similar to the second Devil Monk variant. What's interesting to note is that this poison can damage you even if you are in Demon Morph, so be cautious. If you see a small can on the ground emmiting smoke, stay away from it. These soldiers wear modern desert camo (as the Military Base is based on "Area 51", which is located in the Nevada desert), along with integrated night vision goggless which emit a green light. They also have a hole in their chest. Both attack variants exist for both kinds of Soldiers, so there's no difference between the troops that rush you in the Train Station and the soldiers that rush you in the Military Base. Handle them the same way. All of them last only a few seconds in death, so its very hard to air-juggle them for gold trinkets. Theories Due to their old look and blitzkrieg-rush tactics, they may be based off of soldiers that participated in the ill-fated trench rushes that took place during World War I, which resulted in millions of soldier casualties; that may explain why there are so many in of them in the Purgatory. The cans they throw could be poisonous gas used for chemical warfare, such as mustard or chlorine gas. Trivia *Skeleton Soldiers appear to be the ones that man the mortar turrets encountered in the Military Base. What's even more interesting is that its the older version and not the more "modern" soldiers encountered in the same level. They also make the sounds a Maso Commando would make when killed. They also last a lot longer when killed, and you can get gold from them by juggling or stake-juggling them. *When shooting-variant Skeleton Soldiers are lit aflame, they will act just like melee-variants until the flame dies out. *Sometimes, Skeleton Soldiers will have enough of the Maso Commando lighting them aflame, and will try to kill him. Its rather amusing to watch twenty Skeleton Soldiers attack a single Maso Commando and be completely unable to kill him. Often times he will just keep lighting them on fire, but sometimes he will launch a grenade and kill most of them. *Bizarrely, the Skeleton Soldiers located in the Abandoned Factory are even larger then usual. They are not any stronger than normal, however.